


Bulletins from Bedlam Sidebars I thru III

by thebasement_archivist



Category: The X-Files
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2001-07-10
Updated: 2001-07-10
Packaged: 2018-11-20 06:50:53
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,148
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11330691
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thebasement_archivist/pseuds/thebasement_archivist
Summary: See story parts for details.





	Bulletins from Bedlam Sidebars I thru III

**Author's Note:**

> Note from alice ttlg, the archivist: this story was originally archived at [The Basement](http://fanlore.org/wiki/The_Basement), which moved to the AO3 to ensure the stories are always available and so that authors may have complete control of their own works. To preserve the archive, I began manually importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project in June 2017. I e-mailed all creators about the move and posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this creator, please contact me using the e-mail address on [The Basement's collection profile](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/thebasement/profile).

 

Bedlam Sidebar: Trust By Jessica Harris

Title: Bedlam Sidebar: Trust  
By: Jessica Harris 

Disclaimer: I'm playing with Chris Carter's toys. 

Summary: This was originally a bit that I had edited out of the "Waking the Neighbors" section of Bulletins from Bedlam, (which can be found at: <http://avalon.net/~nonie/jharris/jhindex.html> ) but it refused to just go away. So I worked it up a bit, in the hopes that if I posted it, it would then leave me alone, and I could get back to my sadly neglected series. It's still a fragment, though, a sidebar to "Waking the Neighbours," and won't make sense without having read that first. If in fact it makes sense at all.   
  
And oh yeah - M/K, PG-ish? mild R-ish?  
  
Oh, one more thing now. My house-mate was just reading over my shoulder and said "What the hell are 'meds'?" So for anyone else who is mystified by that, it's short for medications. 

Notes: Thanks to Quercus for her thoughts and suggestions and chat on this one.  
Feedback: As always, cravenly sought after. 

 

* * *

=============================================================  
Bedlam sidebar: Trust  
=============================================================  
  


"Try to trust me a little," he says, and christ, after everything else that shouldn't be too much to ask, should it? 

It's just that - well, trust no one, right? 

God knows we've been through enough together already. He tried it without the meds for a while. We honestly thought it would be all right - he'd gotten so much better, and I knew he was frustrated by the way the drugs made him tired and slow sometimes, made him feel like his head was stuffed with cotton. And he did OK at first, he really did. 

Then one night he woke me, his voice soft and tight and strained as he said "Alex. Alex. Alex. I think - I think we'd better go to the hospital." 

The words took a moment to register and then I sat up in alarm. He was kneeling naked by the side of the bed, shaking, his face turned slightly away, and when I touched him he was cold and wet. 

"Jesus, Mulder!" I said, as I grabbed a blanket and wrapped it around him, "Jesus *christ*!" 

"The roof," he said, answering my unasked question, "I was up on the roof." 

And everything in me twisted and pulled tight when he said that, and I think my heart literally stopped beating for a moment. Then he turned his face to me, and my heart lurched and started again with a furious leap, because the white of one of his eyes was stained bloody and red. He'd ruptured a blood vessel, it turned out, pressing on his own eyelids. Trying to shut out what his mind was showing him. 

He was in the hospital for a couple of weeks that time. And somehow it changed things - I think he finally accepted that this was the way things had to be. He stopped talking about going off the meds. He stopped apologising for his bad days, for the times he lost his place in conversation or said things that made people stiffen and subtly inch away. Stopped trying to hide where he had been and what had happened to him. 

We were in at the Bureau not long after that, doing a workshop on the aliens with a group of new agents, when a car alarm went off outside. In the blink of an eye Mulder grabbed me and the other man next to him and dragged us both under the table, where he pressed himself tight against the ground, eyes wide with terror. I had to crawl over and pull him up off the floor and shake him gently, saying "It's OK, it's OK, it was just a car alarm, everything's fine." Finally the terror left his eyes and he slumped against me, looking around at the wide-eyed stare of the unfortunate young agent who still crouched hesitantly at the feet of his chair, and the uncomfortably shuffling legs that surrounded us. "Oh fuck," he sighed. 

"Do you want to go home?" I asked him. 

"No," he said "I'll finish." 

So we climbed nonchalantly out from under the table and back into our chairs, and he smoothed his hair down and calmly said "Well. Now that I've got your attention..." 

And watching this made me feel actually *sick* with love, dizzy and shaky and sick, there was so much defiance and pride in him. 

So I *should* trust him, right? I mean, he came down from the roof, didn't he? Came down from the roof, and woke me up, and seems to want to stick around. 

But still ... 

The truth is, I'm afraid. And that's pretty fucking priceless, isn't it? The war is over. We were right at the heart of it when it all blew up, and we were left standing when the smoke cleared, we *survived*. And *now* I'm afraid. Now I wake up shaking in the night and reach for him. And if he wasn't there... 

Trust no one was *his* motto, after all. But he only needed it because underneath it all he *did* trust people, he believed that if they knew what was going on they would do the honourable thing, that everything could still be put right. 

I never needed a motto to remind me - I've never been in any danger of trusting anyone. I knew better, knew what people would do given the chance. I've always taken care of things myself, I've always taken care *of* myself. I've never really known any other way to do things. 

And if I didn't love him I think I'd hate him for this, for asking this of me, for showing me how much I need him. Scully tried to say something gooey and grateful to me one day, something about the *burden* I'd taken on in sticking with him, taking care of him. I left the room before she could finish. She has no fucking clue. He's no burden - he's the strong one here. Some days I think he feels things *for* me, feels all the things I can't let myself feel. Taking care of him is what keeps me together now - I can't stand the thought of being left alone with my memories. 

So what can I do when he asks me to trust him, when he asks for something I don't think I'm capable of giving? What can I do but give him whatever I can? So I wrap my arms around him, warm and alive and stronger than anyone gives him credit for, and give it all up to him, cock and mouth and ass and sorry excuse for a heart until I almost believe it's enough. 

End.

 

* * *

 

Title: Bulletins from Bedlam: bedlam bits  
By: Jessica Harris  
Rating: NC-17, M/K  
Disclaimer: Chris Carter owns everything

Notes: These are a couple more scenes from my Bulletins From Bedlam universe. I've been working on them *forever*, and I'm posting them now even tho they're not perfect 'cause otherwise I'm going to start to scream and tear my hair out. They fit in between the scenes in the tunnels and the scenes on the actual battlefield. And you can find the entirety of my bedlam stuff at: http://avalon.net/~nonie/jharris/jhindex.html 

Thanks to Nonie and Spike and Quercus and anyone else who I've rudely forgotten for suggestions during the aeons I've been working on these.

Feedback: I'll love you forever. 

* * *

I. Ghosts  
  


Mulder remembers dying. At least, he thinks he does; there had been gunshots, and he had fallen, and then -

\- and then he had been in hell, and Krycek, his personal monster, had been there with him.

Still, if he's dead, he can't quite figure out what he's doing here, in this large and drafty apartment, where Krycek sleeps beside him in the creaking metal bed.

After some reflection, he decides he must be a ghost.

Certainly the serious men who come and go with their plans don't seem to see him, even with the clanking chain he's come to sport in classic ghostly fashion. And his body seems insubstantial and distant, he can't quite feel his own touch, the hand that he still can't keep from creeping nervously up and down his ribs.

But it's less disturbing than he would have expected, this ghostly state. Nothing touches him anymore - not the frightening discussions of the serious men, not even his own memories, the slow unravelling he witnesses as he flits through this strange new territory, the twisting passages of his own mind. He watches himself from a distance, and wonders vaguely if it's somehow *himself* that he's been sent to haunt.

More likely, he decides, it's Krycek. Krycek seems to be the only one who sees him, Krycek stays close, and looks at him with dark and watchful eyes. But Krycek's eyes have always held their own ghosts, and as days go by and the eyes won't leave him he begins to grow restless, and to wonder just who is haunting who.

Krycek's eyes distract him from his own internal wanderings, they remind him that like any ghost he's been sent back for a reason, that there are wrongs to be put right. And the words of the serious men begin to creep into his mind, and his own memories come a little closer, and at night his dreams are strange and restless. And Krycek is still there when he wakes, a strangely loving monster now, holding him tight while the dark eyes keep watching him.

He resists. He likes it like this, no pain, no urgency, no nothing, really. And he doesn't want to go back to hell, not to the tunnels or the life he's left behind. But gradually as he listens it comes clear to him - there's a message from his old life that has to be delivered.

So he lets his old life through for a moment, and this time they listen. The serious men, and Krycek too. Then his chain falls away, and he finds himself with a cell-phone in his hand, coming dangerously close to some memories he's tried to avoid, sensing in them pain that might refuse to be kept distanced. But he'd done it, he'd dialed Skinner's private number and requested a meeting. "For old times' sake, Walter," he'd said, careful to keep his voice calm and firm. He'd never invoked this before, his living self had been too proud, but that was unimportant now.

And Walter had reluctantly agreed, and Mulder had set out, leaving Krycek's eyes behind him. And Walter hadn't even *seen* him.

Had fixed his eyes on a spot about three feet behind Mulder's head and kept shaking his head 'no', refusing to hear what Mulder had to tell him.

And Mulder had felt an old desperation rise in him, faced with this refusal to see or hear or understand or *believe*... and his careful arguments twisted and shriveled into pleading nonsense, and then somehow he'd been on the other side of the door...

And he doesn't remember coming back here, but here he is, face pressed into the back of the couch, and he doesn't know how Krycek got here, but he can feel his restless presence in the room and he knows, he really does, just how pathetic this is, but he can't do it, can't summon the spirit to move his fading ectoplasmic limbs.

And now Alex is standing very close indeed, and a voice (whose calmness he recognises even now as a very bad sign indeed) says, "So, I guess Skinner didn't welcome you with open arms, huh?" and jesusfuckingchrist that's just too much and he's up and his hands are around Alex's throat and they're falling...

And Skinner's set and angry face grows small in his mind's eye as he falls away from it, falls forward into Krycek's dark regard, hurtling towards the reflection of himself that he sees there.

They fall for what seems like a long time and then they hit the ground hard. The breath is knocked from Krycek's lungs, hot against Mulder's face, and it feels like he's fallen back into his body from a great height and christ it *hurts*, everything *hurts*, he feels it all now, the pain of his life falling to pieces, all the things he's lost, the realisation that there's nothing here for him now, nothing but this, the embrace of his own loving monster, arms around him as his body jerks and writhes across the floor.

Over and over and over they roll across the paper-strewn floor, not fighting, exactly, (though Mulder notices that his hands are still around Krycek's throat) but as if they've been knocked flying by the blast of heat between them. And Mulder knows he's no ghost now, for rising through the pain is heat wherever Krycek touches him and his cock is hard, so hard.

Krycek's mouth strains open as he struggles to breath and his body arches desperately against Mulder's, and then somehow their wet open mouths find each other messily and Mulder grasps him even closer and feels that Krycek's cock is hard as well. Then they're jarred apart, Mulder's back slamming against the couch, and he fumbles with Krycek's fly until he can reach one shaking hand inside to stroke hard hot flesh. Krycek bucks once with a whimper, and Mulder's hand is suddenly hot and wet.

He pulls it out and looks at it, licks a stray pearl drop off the ball of his thumb, but Krycek catches his wrist and forces his hand down, and under Krycek's guidance they're somehow both undressed and he's slicking his own cock with Krycek's semen, Krycek's hand wrapped around his own.

Up against the couch, now, papers crumpling beneath their knees. Mulder works an exploratory finger into Krycek, and his head spins dizzily at the breathy sound the other man makes.

The sounds don't stop. Breathy broken choked-off noises spill from Krycek's mouth as Mulder eases into him. Krycek gasps out broken sentences, scraps of words, his jaw working as though he's trying to bite them back. Mulder doesn't understand them, but he hears in them a pain as great as his own, a monster's lament, and he tugs Krycek's head around for a kiss, swallowing the laboured breath and inarticulate sound while Krycek's body flails beneath him. After a moment Krycek pulls away, breathless again, body spasming tight around Mulder's cock, and before he can stop himself Mulder is coming, coming hard, and the last thing he hears before his exhausted body slides to the ground is Krycek breathing his name.

* * *

II. Listening

I guess I didn't think he was listening. Hell, none of us did - it didn't even seem like he was really *there*. He'd spend hours curled on the bed, lips moving silently to himself as he ran his hand up and down his side, or he'd drift aimlessly around the apartment with no sound but the clank of the chain through his ankle-cuff. "I hope you're happy now, Alex," Carl had snarled at me the day he left. "You've got yourself a *pet*."

I broke his nose for saying that, but he wasn't completely wrong. My team wasn't *happy* to have Mulder there, but after a while they mostly ignored him. And we ended up talking around him as carelessly as if he *were* a dog.

And then one day, as we were going over our plans, a rusty voice suddenly croaked from the bed, "That won't work, you know."

We all turned to stare, and there on the bed sat 'Agent' Mulder - upright posture, smartass deadpan expression, flat mocking eyes. If it wasn't for the way that his hands clutched and worked at each other I might almost have believed it. He brushed his shaggy hair out of his eyes and proceeded to tell us exactly what he thought the aliens were planning and why our current scheme was flawed. I guess he'd been listening after all. And besides, he knows how the aliens think, knows them better than anyone - he's been studying them since the days before they officially existed.

Then his professional mask disappeared abruptly and he lay back down on the bed, one arm tucked against his side and his hand running up and down again along his ribs.

To be honest it gave me chills, the way he could summon that facade of a self I knew he hadn't been in ages. It made me wonder how long he'd been crumbling away beneath it before anyone noticed. I watched him drift away again, and I wanted to go to him and stop that compulsive hand with my own, take hold of his face and pull it close and keep him there until he'd let me see what was going on behind his eyes, hear what it was that he kept silently repeating to himself. I knew he wasn't really Agent Mulder anymore. But I knew there was still *someone* in there. I could - I could *feel* it, like a distant hum of electricity, a vibration in the bones behind my ears. I just didn't know how to *get* to him. Sometimes I would wake up with my ear pressed tight against his chest, as if it were simply a matter of listening closely enough to that distant hum...

And I know what you're thinking, that it's perverse at best, sleeping with him when he was like that. No better than rape. I could see the same thoughts in the eyes of the other men when they saw bitemarks on his neck or scratches on my shoulders.

I'll admit I felt a little weird about it myself. I mean, I may play a little rough sometimes, and to me "no" has always meant "try harder", but I've never had to rely on actual *derangement* to get someone into bed before.

But ... at night, see, he'd dream. Dreams that made him twitch and toss and moan in his sleep, made him flinch and fight with the blankets until he'd wake with a cry and clutch at me, roll his whole body against me, hardening cock against my own. And I couldn't - well, I couldn't just push him away, could I? Not only because I wanted him, but because I ... I knew what that was like, waking in the night so full of need, when all you want is for someone - anyone - to take it all away. So we'd end up rolling and sliding against each other, cock against cock, against thigh and belly, until finally he'd cry out again, and carry me over with him. And then he'd sleep quietly. I don't even know if he knew what was happening - his eyes were open, but he looked right through me, and he never said a word.

Then, that night in bed, he finally spoke to me. He reached out, laid his hand flat over my suddenly racing heart, and said, "We have to tell Skinner what's going to happen. You know we have to."

Not exactly the words I'd been waiting to hear.

Would I have let him go if I'd thought there was even the remotest chance that Skinner would listen to him? The things he told us about the aliens spooked even me... But I guess we'll never know for sure.

And neither one of us said anything as I climbed out of bed and unlocked the ankle cuff.

* * *

III. Heads in the Freezer

You know, If I'd seen this in a case file, I'dve told them to check the freezer for human heads. I'm in Mulder's apartment, and every inch of it screams obsession.

He must have every abduction report ever collected. Pages from them are taped to the walls, annotated, highlighted, and scrawled with arrows and diagrams. Government reports, both public and classified, are stacked around the room, so handled that their edges look fuzzy and organic. More reports spill from boxes piled in what might once have been the bedroom, and a loose drift of clipped articles and hand-written pages cover the remaining areas of floor. The kitchen holds nothing but an old bad smell and a table covered in correspondence.

The only clear surface is one corner of the couch, a space a few feet square, just big enough to hold a grown man if he pulled his knees up tight to his chest and lay absolutely still

Which is just what Mulder is doing. I thought I might find him here.

This isn't where either one of us should be. My team had a mission planned for tonight, an important one. And whatever their various loyalties once were, the men who work with me are professionals. Which means there are certain rules, even here. This was my show only because I had gotten the ball rolling, and I knew that any one of the others might step in if they thought I was slipping. And they've been watching me very carefully, since I brought Mulder home. I can see it in those sidelong looks they give me - a little derision, a lot of calculation, and a certain strange wariness.

It makes them nervous, his craziness and how close I get to it. I think they're afraid that somehow it's *catching*. And that's a fear that's deep and old and primal and can lead to some very ugly things. Like I said, even rebels and outlaws have rules. You know what sort of things you're going to face. But once someone crosses the line that Mulder has, there are no more rules. And that frightens even the outlaws.

So, as the time for the rendezvous came closer and closer and Mulder still hadn't come back, I thought of trying to explain why I'd let a madman who knew all our secrets go to Skinner. Then I thought of Mulder out there in the ruined city.

Then I went after him.

Now I stand behind him, listening to his rough distressed breathing. I wonder what Skinner did to him, and I bite back a flare of anger that I can't afford right now. There will be time later, I promise myself, to settle scores.

"So," I finally say, "I guess Skinner didn't exactly welcome you with open arms," and in the blink of an eye he's off the couch and leaping right at me.

Over we go with a tremendous crash and he lands on top of me, knocking the air out of me with a Whuff! like flames igniting. For a moment I'm blinded, flopping and writhing like a gaffed fish, struggling for breath as we roll together through the debris of his apartment, his hands still at my throat and his body driving against mine. When my vision clears his face is only inches away, he's looking right at me and I can't help but meet his eyes, and the blankness of the past weeks is gone, and so is the 'Agent' Mulder deadpan, and all I can see in them now is just, christ, just so much *pain*, pain and loss and fear and confusion, and the grip he has on me doesn't feel like anger anymore, more like he's hanging on for dear life.

Breathless still I'm holding onto him, and then for the first time his mouth is on mine, and it feels more important than air, this strange sudden wetness, and for a moment I forget my screaming lungs as heat rushes through me and I arch up against him. Then we land up hard against the couch, our mouths are jarred apart, he's yanking at my fly, and before I can warn him I'm coming in his hand like some desperate teenager.

He looks at his hand like he doesn't understand what's happened. Then he raises it to his mouth, but I grab him and we tussle a moment longer, and then with his hand in mine we're slicking his cock and I'm up against the couch with his fingers and then his cock stretching me open...

And it was ...

Well, in a lot of ways it wasn't very good at all. It hurt without lube, and my arm was still painful, and god knows he didn't last long, we were so wound up.

But I ...

Look, I've never been exactly what you could call a shrinking violet. And over the years I've been here hundreds of times, here in this moment when someone - anyone - splits me open and fills me up, when I lose myself in that slick hard slide inside of me. I've sought it out, again and again, more times than I can count. And this time was - different.

When he slid into me it was like he got up inside me somewhere no one else had ever been. And it knocked something loose in me, drove everything else out of me the way he had knocked my breath from my lungs when we fell. I could hear myself start to tell him all the things I had never meant him to know, the things I had seen and done since this all started, the crazy things I had thought with him there in the bed with me at night... it all came spilling out of me in broken nonsense gasps. I couldn't stop myself, couldn't breathe, felt dizzy and panicked and suddenly sick and I could have fucking *cried*, or something equally humiliating. But then I felt his hand on my jaw, and he turned my head and looked at me again, really looked. And then he kissed me. And it was like he knew, knew it all already and accepted it, took it into himself with this rough and awkward kiss.

Then we both slid to the ground. I think he actually passed out for a while, heavy on my back while I lay panting with my cheek against the dusty floor and wondered what the hell had just happened to me. I could see a piece of paper under the couch, and idly I reached in to pull it out. It was a photo, much-handled, and it showed Mulder and Walter Skinner, standing outside in the country somewhere. Skinner's arm was around Mulder's shoulders.

I looked at that picture for a long time. I snuck it out with me when we left. Later that night I burnt it.

And as we lay there I suddenly heard my own voice say "I think I've got a plan for you, Mulder. I think we can stop them."

* * *  
  


 

* * *

 

Title: Bulletins from Bedlam Sidebar III: Mourning my Death  
By: Jessica Harris  
Disclaimer: I'm playing with Chris Carter's toys.  
Notes: No, the title has nothing to do with any events on the show this season... This one has been on my hard-drive for ages, and doesn't seem to be getting any longer, so I guess that makes it done... this is another bit that would come after the "Waking the Neighbours" section. If anyone wants to find the rest of the Bulletins, they're at: http://internettrash.com/users/livia/jessica/jh-series.htm  
Feedback: Feed my disease... 

* * *

=====================================  
Bedlam Sidebar III: Mourning my Death  
Jessica Harris  
=====================================

Scully came over for dinner last night. She brought red wine, which I can't drink anymore, and Alex cooked a meal that was... well, pretty awful, really. His cooking tends to be nothing less than a full frontal assault on the ingredients, and everything ends up salted without mercy and scorched into submission.

But he was pleasant, or at least civil, all evening, so I guess the cooking had some therapeutic value. And Scully ate without complaint, and made gracious conversation, and only once or twice did I catch her looking at me like she was already mourning my death.

All things considered, a fairly successful dinner party. More successful than most we've attempted.

Scully can't help it, really. It makes Alex ballistic, but she's a doctor, after all, she wants to *fix* things, and when something can't be fixed, all she can see is where it's broken.

So when she looks at me... well, you can guess what it is she sees.

I don't... I don't track time very well anymore. Sometimes it's hard for me to remember that for most people, it just moves one way, one day following the other on and on until things are all in the past, safely behind them. But for me...

I know they're gone. The aliens, that is. I know that. I remember what we did, and Alex's eyebrows never did grow back properly after that final blast. But I... somehow I carry them with me.

Inside me. Like a weight in the base of my skull. All of it - them, and the ships and the fires and the tunnels and the blood and the rain, the rain, the rain, that rain the ships brought with them, so black and sooty and strange.

It's all there just on the other side of that thin edge of 'now', and here, where I am, the edges of things don't hold so steady anymore. It falls inside me all the time, that chill black rain, and it blurs things... Sometimes I'll be talking to Scully or Skinner and only when I see the look in their eyes do I realise that I've slipped again, that I'm telling them about a case long past, warning them of disasters that have come and gone.

I think that Alex minds it even more than I do, that look in people's eyes. He gets so *angry*. When I finally shut the door behind Scully and came back into the kitchen, he was washing the dishes so fiercely that I feared for their lives. "Don't blame the dinner-plates, Alex," I said to him. He looked down at the plate in his hand for a second, then hurled it against the fridge where it shattered with such force that we both ducked. Then he pushed me up against the counter, grabbed the back of my head and kissed me.

"I hate her," he finally said against the side of my face.

"No you don't," I said.

He tensed for a moment, then said, 'I love you." And I just nodded, and led him carefully through the shards of the dishes and into the bedroom.

He'd never say it, but some of it scares him too. He's afraid that one day I'll slip back into that time before the battle when I hated him, when we were enemies. And because he won't say it, I can't tell him, can't tell him that that will never happen. The only thing that holds steady for me anymore is what I feel, and what I feel for him is... well, I could say love, but that's inadequate. Love is just one small piece of it.

  
Archived: May 27, 2001 


End file.
